Saturday, November 6, 2010

Banana-Walnut Chocolate-Chunk Cookies

Banana-nut bread and the chocolate chip cookie make a good couple. These Banana-Walnut Chocolate-Chunk Cookies have the flavor and lightness of banana bread, with the taste and chocolate hit of chocolate chip cookies. They're fun and easy to make, and just what I was looking for after slightly fussier apple crostatas and bar cookies.

I've been doing more, but my baking and cooking projects don't always end up on the blog. Some I consider too ordinary or ubiquitous. Sometimes I neglected to take photos. Sometimes, as in this case, the recipe just didn't work out. I had been looking for a pumpkin biscotti recipe but they're so few. This recipe was halfway to a disaster. The flavor was good, but they didn't get to the correct, hard biscotti consistency and had chewy middles despite repeat stints in the oven. I finally decided that pumpkin puree must be too wet for proper biscotti, and that the storebought variety I'd tried before probably uses some industrial powdered pumpkin flavoring.

My pumpkin-carving didn't go so great either, since I cleaned it the week before and let it sit, and it grew moldy. In the end, I carved a simple face in a very thick gourd since stores were sold out of pumpkins. I had to envy Joe's pumpkin (bottom right), since he did a better job and his pumpkin is still mold-free.

These cookies went waaay easier. Surprisingly, the recipe called for oats and some whole wheat flour, and I used some white whole wheat flour I had on hand. Everybody's favorite start to cookie dough is that mixture of butter, white sugar, and brown sugar. The remaining ingredients are added, and then scooped onto a cookie sheet. The cookies bake up small, but I had a big yield of over 40. The recipe calls for cutting up your own chocolate chunks, but I didn't realize and had bought 60% cacao chocolate chips. But they were perfect, nice and big with a deeper, grown-up flavor.

Preheat oven to 375°. Whisk together both flours, salt, and baking soda in a bowl.

Put butter and both sugars into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to low. Add egg and vanilla; mix until combined. Mix in banana. Add flour mixture; mix just until combined. Stir in oats, chocolate chunks, and walnuts.